Category Archives: Going Green and Sustainable

Free Seedlings and Chocolate — Catch Them If You Can

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Dagoba's popular lavender blueberry chocolate bar. (Photo by Crystal Munoz)

Representatives of Dagoba Organic Chocolate of Oregon will be handing out free chocolate bars and herb seedlings in six locations in San Francisco and Berkeley, today through Sept. 13.

The catch? You can find out the general locations and the dates, but not the exact times the freebies will be handed out. Dagoba says it’s a stealth, guerrilla-type operation to maintain the sense of surprise. (Uhh, I’m sure that makes sense in some universe.)

Be on the lookout in Justin Herman Plaza and Union Square in San Francisco today; the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco on Sept. 6; Golden Gate Park in San Francisco on Sept. 7; the University of California at Berkeley campus on Sept. 7; and the Berkeley Farmers’ Market (Center Street at Martin Luther King Jr. Way) on Sept. 13.

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Slow Food Nation’s Cooking Demos Coming to YouTube

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An assistant helps New York chef David Chang prepare for his cooking demo.

If you missed this weekend’s Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco, you’ll still be able to enjoy a part of it on the Web in the near future.

Cooking demos in the “Green Kitchen” were filmed and will be posted on YouTube at a future date. I got a chance to sit in on two of the demos, the first featured Alice Waters of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse making vinaigrette with her 25-year-old daughter, Fanny Singer, who was on break from grad school. The second featured maverick New York chef David Chang, who created his take on caprese salad, in which he substituted tofu for mozzarella, and shiso for basil.

Alice Waters has long been associated with salad, having almost single-handedly popularized mesclun mix in the United States. Fanny said her mother’s salad was probably the first food she ate in puree form when she was a baby.

“Salad is my favorite thing to cook,” Fanny said. “When I say that, my friends all say that there’s not much cooking to that. But there is a lot involved in making a good salad.” It starts with carefully washed leaves that have been dried completely so that the dressing will adhere to it better and the greens will be crisper. Then, there’s the vinaigrette, which Waters says, should not shock you with its tartness, but give you a pleasant brightness.

Such care is taken with her salads that Waters said it used to take one person eight hours to wash and dry all the salad leaves when Chez Panisse first opened.

Decades ago, when Playboy magazine named Chez Panisse the seventh best restaurant in the country, Waters flew to New York for the big gala event. She decided to make salad as her dish. She picked all the lettuces from the garden at the last possible moment, carrying them on the plane still covered in dirt (imagine getting that through security today).

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Scenes From Slow Food Nation

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The artsy display at the olive oils tasting pavilion.

Like a culinary Woodstock, crowds of foodies continue to congregate at this weekend’s Slow Food Nation celebration in San Francisco to support all that’s sustainable, organic, family-raised, handcrafted, traditionally made, and downright delicious.

An expected 50,000 are expected to attend lectures, films, concerts, and tastings that illuminate and showcase why access to good food made without chemicals, antibiotics, genetic engineering, and harm to the environment is a right we all should have.

Slow Food is a global organization founded about 20 years ago in Rome, when citizens rose up in ire against the planned opening of a McDonald’s by the landmark Spanish Steps.

Endive grown by Solano's California Vegetable Specialties

This is Slow Food’s first mega event in the United States. Most of the events already are sold out, including the super-popular Tasting Pavilions, where visitors can sample everything from charcuterie to pickles to spirits to cheese, in focused, educational tastings.

Swiss chard and other veggies growing in the Victory Garden

But one of the best free events is still open to all comers. Through Aug. 31, the market in Civic Center Plaza will showcase the best of the best from California farmers and producers.

Elephant Heart plums from Blossom Bluff Orchards in Fresno

Here’s your chance to sample and buy Frog Hollow Farm peaches, Marian Farms biodynamic raisins from Fresno, Stinson Beach-based Ancient Organics’ ghee, Lagier Farms’ Bronx grapes from Escalon, and plenty more.  Additionally, nosh on gourmet prepared foods, including novel ice cream flavors from Ici Ice Creams in Berkeley, 100 percent grass-fed hot dogs from San Francisco’s Let’s Be Frank, and Vietnamese street food from San Francisco’s Out the Door.

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Eat Well — Without Going Broke

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With the price of everything on the rise, we’re all tempted to cut back on buying organics and wild seafood, which can put a big dent in the pocketbook.

But there’s a way to still enjoy all of that — and eat it, too.

The key is to choose wisely. That’s the message in my latest posting on the Slow Food Nation blog, which gives tips and advice on eating right in these economically challenging times.

Read What Former Google Chef Charlie Ayers Is Up To

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Former Google Chef Charlie Ayers. Photo courtesy of Mr. Ayers.

It wasn’t always easy to please his big bosses at Google in Mountain View, says Chef Charlie Ayers, who was hired as employee #53.

After all, back in 1999-2004, those guys working there weren’t exactly big-time foodies. Google co-founder Larry Page had a thing for Subway sandwiches, and for some reason, a vehement dislike of jerky. Even free-range, artisan-made, bison jerky, which Ayers learned about the hard way.

Ayers once put some out in the free-snacks area, and the engineers gorged themselves on it. But the next day, Ayers found the remainder of the jerky on his desk. “Larry didn’t want me to serve it,” Ayers says. “The only thing he said was, ‘I don’t like it.’ I thought, ‘Okayyyyy….I’ll just figure that one out on my own.’ ”

Then there was the time he thought his bonus check had a mistake in it. He thought there were too many zeroes in it. Ayers’ bonus was tied directly to the number of employees who stayed on campus to eat. So Ayers asked his boss, who looked over the check and said, “This is correct. And if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, there will be plenty more where that came from.”

Ayers wasn’t the only one who was incredulous. His sous chef also thought the bonus check he had received must be wrong. He showed it to Ayers who deadpanned, “No, this is correct. And if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, there will be plenty more where that came from.”

Enjoy more fun with Ayers in my column, “A Girl’s Gotta Eat” in today’s Metro. Read all about his newest project, the eco-friendly Calafia Cafe and Market A Go Go in the Palo Alto Town & Country Village, which is expected to open in November.

(Note: Because the Metro is late in posting the column on its online site, the column also appears at the end of this FoodGal posting, right after the recipe.)

For those who want to turn up the heat while reading, here’s a fiery recipe from Ayers’ new cookbook,
“Food 2.0, Secrets From the Chef Who Fed Google” (DK Publishing).

Google Hot Sauce

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